The Sight (45 page)

Slavka lowered her eyes.

‘I am bitterly sorry for what I nearly made them do.  I would serve you, Larka.  I offer you the greatest gift I have.  My loyalty.’

Larka hesitated, but Keeka had got to her feet and her tail was wagging delightedly.

‘I would have you on my side, Slavka,’ nodded Larka sadly, ‘as would your rebel pack.  They never wanted to betray you.’

‘Then let me help you.  There are still a few rebels who doubt you.  Let me talk to them, Larka.  Let us fight side by side.’

Larka shivered, but she needed friends more than ever and Slavka’s bold face, so like her own, suddenly filled her with hope.

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘you are free to wander through camp, Slavka.  To talk to the rebels.’

Slavka nodded gravely.

‘Thank you.  You will not be sorry.’

As Slavka prowled away none of them saw that her face was bright with scorn.  But, as she went, Karma turned suddenly to Larka.

‘Larka,’ she growled in her deep, rich voice, ‘you mustn’t trust her.’

‘You’re wrong, Karma,’ said Larka softly.  ‘We must all trust, and have faith in each other.’

Darkness had descended over Transylvania, weaving its fingers through the trees and stroking the meadows with night, when Larka made her kill.  She found a spot away from the rebels in a sheltered hollow, ringed by oak trees, and lay the meat from an old ewe in front of her.  Tsarr and her parents stood watching her gravely as she lay down in the hollow, and Skart’s hard eyes were watching Larka more intensely than ever.

‘This may take suns,’ whispered Tsarr to Palla and Huttser, ‘but if they try to keep her, if that time ever comes you must call to her.  Call to her with all your love and never give up.’

‘I would give anything to save my daughter,’ growled Palla, thinking back to everything Tsinga had said in the Vale of Shadows, ‘even if it means my own death.’

‘It is not your death we need now, Palla,’ growled Tsarr, ‘but your life.’

The three of them padded over to Larka and, as Tsarr settled a little way off, Huttser and Palla lay down in front of their daughter.  They hardly noticed Skart ruffling his feathers next to them.  His hooked beak had begun to bob up and down and his talons were digging into the ground.

‘Larka,’ said Palla softly, ‘if you go...  if you go there and see ...  him.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Tell him we still...’

Palla dropped her muzzle hopelessly, and Larka suddenly felt a burning tenderness for her parents.

‘Very well, then,’ she said.  ‘It begins.  And as everything begins, it begins in sleep.’

Larka laid her head on her paws.  The meat lay in the grass in front of her.  She was falling deeper and deeper into sleep.  Midnight had passed when Larka stirred and her nose twitched.  Palla shivered as she heard Larka begin to growl.  Suddenly Larka lifted her head.  She was still asleep, for though her ears were pricked and her muzzle moved back and forth as though searching for something in the darkness, her eyes were clamped tightly shut.

‘It’s beginning,’ growled Tsarr.

The fur on Larka’s coat began to bristle and she lifted her head higher.  Her mother and father could see the fine white hairs rippling along her throat.  Larka tipped back her muzzle and, though her eyes were still closed, she opened her mouth.

‘Fenris,’ she snarled, ‘Fenris.’

The howl that suddenly rose into the air made the rebels start in their camp.  It came from the depths of her belly and climbed angrily into the night.  It shook through the trees and hovered in the air.  Out of all the calls of the wolf it was like none that Huttser and Palla had ever heard, even that night when the Searchers had come.  Rar heard it, too, and it was so strange that he prowled out of Bran’s cave and came down the slopes to listen.

‘Larka,’ he whispered to the breeze, ‘take care.’

But suddenly Larka’s call seemed to stop.  Larka’s throat was still moving, her head lifting, her muzzle opening to howl, but the sound had vanished into silence.

‘Now she’s really calling,’ growled Tsarr furiously.  ‘Now she is howling to the dead.’

Larka’s head slumped on to her paws.  As it dropped, Skart did something extraordinary.  He hopped forward and began to peck at Larka’s tail with his great clawed beak.

‘What are you doing, Skart?’ snarled Huttser angrily.  Larka looked like carrion as Skart pulled at the she-wolf’s fur, but the bird would not be distracted.  He plucked and pecked at Larka’s tail, jabbing and pulling frantically.  Tsarr was standing now, growling angrily too.

‘Have you gone mad, Skart?’ he cried, but as Tsarr thought of the legend a terrible notion sprang into his mind.

‘No, Skart, it can’t be, not you.’

Those words were ringing in Tsarr’s ears.  ‘
Beware the Betrayer, whose meaning is strife.
’ Still Skart went on and, when he turned to face the wolves, there were tufts of Larka’s fur sprouting from his beak.  Suddenly, overcome with a fury for his helpless daughter, Huttser hurled himself at Skart.

But the eagle opened his wings and lifted away.  Into the air he rose and, as the wolves dwindled to specks beneath him, his anger beat the air.  His mind was ringing with one thought alone as his piercing eagle eyes began to scour the land below.

As Larka lay in the hollow Bran was huddled asleep in the cave.  The shadow of a wolf suddenly fell across the child’s body.  It growled and as it padded through the entrance towards the child the wolf licked its lips and its eyes glistened angrily.  It prowled slowly round the human and its mouth dribbled as its hot breath stroked the human.

‘So,’ it whispered bitterly, ‘the greatest of all killers.’

But even as Slavka opened her powerful jaws, remembering her cubs and feeling the hate burn in her belly, something new came into her eyes.  An emptiness.  The wolf seemed to be wrestling with herself, and her legs and tail quivered frantically.  But at last the energy went out of her and she dropped her muzzle submissively.

‘Very well,’ she growled helplessly, ‘so be it.’

Slavka was answering a distant voice.  A voice that echoed in her brain.  Bran opened his eyes and Slavka’s muzzle curled into a snarl again.  Her ears flattened on her head as she dropped on her forepaws by the human.

‘Come, child,’ she whispered.  ‘Travel with me.’

As Bran felt the heat of hate in Slavka’s body he started to wail and great tears came rolling down his little cheeks.

‘Hush,’ growled Slavka angrily, ‘they’ll hear you.  Climb on my back or I will snap through your throat.’

Still Bran went on crying.

‘Come now,’ Slavka whispered suddenly, and her tone changed as she licked Bran’s face, ‘trust me, child.  You must trust me now.  We’ll steal away from this place.  I’ll take you to those who would care for you properly.  Who can really love you.’

Bran’s sobs began to subside, and Slavka tilted her body closer.  For a moment the child’s eyes were filled with an instinctive doubt, but so similar were Larka and Slavka that he was confused.  Suddenly he turned and started to scramble on to Slavka’s back.  Slavka shuddered as she felt him clutching at her fur, but she rose.  Her eyes were completely lost.

‘Now, Larka,’ she hissed, and it was as though the voice was not her own, ‘now we shall truly see.’

Larka was in a dark place, like a tunnel or a pathway walled with shadows; like the stairway that, in her youth, she had looked up with her brother to the strange castle.  She was walking slowly, and around her pine trees tore into the sky.  The meat from her kill was in her mouth and the air was cold and still.

As she walked, her eyes began to grow accustomed to the darkness and she realized, instinctively at first, that there were other wolves in the trees with her, silvery ghosts that haunted the wood.  As she saw them, a petrifying fear came on her.  At first they did not attempt to approach, but more and more seemed to be following her, drifting after her through the trees.

‘Courage,’ whispered Larka to herself.  ‘I must have courage.’

It felt to Larka as if she was holding on to some blind hope, or to a truth that the whole world was trying to deny.

Light began to come, but as it grew Larka shivered, for there was no heat in it.  It seemed to make the wood even more fearful as the air took on a yellowy pallor, while the objects that it lit seemed drained of colour, grey and lifeless.

Larka felt a terrible gloom enter her mind and her legs began to tremble.  The trees around her were thinning, and Larka saw more of the spectral wolves.  Then, suddenly, the avenue came to an end and Larka gasped.

She was on the edge of a huge meadow, ringed by giant trees.  The trees’ shapes were as dim and grey as the spectres and, at a distance, they might have been forms glimpsed in sleep.  The sky was pallid and sickly, and even the grass looked colourless and white, like straw bleached by the sun.  Yet there was colour here, as shocking as a wound, for the whole meadow was filled with poppies and, though their stalks were grey, their fragile tops, like the wings of mingling butterflies, were a bright and brilliant red.

Larka dipped her head as she looked on that great sea of blood-red flowers, splashed against the grey.  She felt confused, for the meadow was both beautiful and terrible.  Then, as Tsarr had told her, Larka threw the mutton in her mouth on the grass and howled.  The sound that lifted from her own mouth across that strange field made the she-wolf quake.  It was muffled and dull, like a cry lost against the wind.  But as she howled Larka realized that shapes were suddenly moving towards her through the flowers.

From every side of the meadow came the spectres, drifting through the poppies, their flanks brushing against the velvety flowers.  They had the same shadowy quality as the wolves in the trees and they all looked grey and pale.

Larka trembled as she saw the armies of the dead trooping towards her, for now she made out their eyes and, though they were not red as they had been in Kosov, they all had the same lost and glassy look.  Yet in those empty orbs Larka saw something else, a look of hunger, and she realized that they were all scenting the cold air.  They were being summoned to her by the meat.

 ‘Come,’ cried Larka in a commanding voice.  Her parents, watching her lying there in the hollow below the rebel camp, saw her lift her sleeping head again.

On came the flow of spectral wolves, and soon the meadow was entirely filled, but still they came.  But as they drew closer Larka began to growl.  As the nearest of the wolves drew close to the meat, Larka howled again and cried out, ‘Stop, you may come no further.  The living commands you.’

The wolves all stopped.  Their eyes seemed to look through her as they too began to growl.  A whispering went up through the poppies, and Larka realized they were speaking as one.

‘Meat,’ they murmured like a wind, ‘meat.’

Larka shivered again, but she fought back the terrible fear.

‘Yes, I bring meat,’ she stammered, ‘from the other side.  But only one may come.’

The wolves that ringed Larka began to growl again, for they were wrestling with their hunger, but it was plain that they were frightened too.  Suddenly one of the spectres stepped forward.  His face was scarred and Larka realized, with amazement that she had seen him among the rebel dead in the valley of Kosov.  Around him now she began to see other rebels, and the Night Hunters that had died too, standing calmly at their sides.

‘I will answer you,’ he growled, scenting the air hungrily.  The wolf’s hollow eyes were staring at the meat, as bright and red as the poppies.

‘Tell me, then,’ whispered Larka, ‘what is this place?’

‘This place? We do not really know.  Some call it the Red Meadow and some call it the Field of the Dead.’

In the foothills above Kosov, Kar was running.  Over the past suns he had hardly slept and had kept constantly on the move, running as long as his stamina held out, never once pausing to hunt or scavenge.  Instinct told Kar to hurry, but he hardly knew why or where.  A voice inside kept whispering to him, like the voices he had heard in the cave.

Kar rested that night in a wide clearing, and as he woke to the dawn, he suddenly heard a cry high above.  Among the shifting clouds he saw a tiny shape wheeling in distant circles.  Round it went and round, and as he watched it grew larger and larger.  It was coming towards him.

The bird sailed straight into the clearing and settled on the ground in front of him.  Kar was amazed; he had never known such a large bird of prey approach a wolf before.  Its huge eyes seemed to be examining Kar’s features, looking for a sign, and then it nodded and hopped forward.  There was something in its beak, which it dropped on the grass in front of Kar.  The wolf wanted to pounce on the eagle, but he stopped as he realized that what the bird had brought him was fur.

Kar cocked his ears.  Slowly he pushed his muzzle towards the fur and sniffed at it.  In an instant he was on his feet as her scent filled his nostrils.

‘Larka,’ he gasped.  ‘Larka.’

Skart nodded frantically and suddenly took to the air again.  As Kar looked up, Skart began to swoop over his head and Kar realized that the eagle wanted him to follow.  Kar leapt after him, running as fast as his paws could carry him.

‘Larka,’ he cried frantically, ‘Larka is in danger.’

‘And you are the dead?’ Larka trembled in the meadow.

The wolf paused and looked up.

‘Not as you might understand it, Larka,’ he answered quietly.  ‘We are the Searchers.  Spectres of the dead, shadows.’ As he said it, it was as though Larka was talking to herself, so distant was that lifeless voice.

‘Then...  then you are not real?’

‘Perhaps we are as real as your memories, Larka.  Or your dreams.’

Larka’s eyes opened as she stared back.  She remembered something Tsinga had said about the power of memories.

‘Then this is not where the dead go?’ she whispered.

‘Oh no, this is not where the dead go,’ answered the wolf, turning his head wistfully towards the forest.  He paused.

‘But of that I may not speak.  Of that none may speak.’

‘But tell me where you come from.  Is it like this? Are Tor and Fenris—’